St. Nicholas Day

December 6th is the feast day of St. Nicholas, Bishop of Myra in the 4th century. He was known for his great faith and generosity.  Many parts of the world celebrate his feast day with the giving of gifts which are meant to be shared.  In the United States, the modern tradition of Santa Claus (since the early 1800's) can be traced to Nicholas.  Say "St. Nicholas" with a heavy accent and you get "Sant ni-Claus."  Surprised?

My mother tried to bring celebrations of the Saints into our family life. From an early age I remember hanging our stockings up on the evening of December 5th.  Overnight St. Nick would fill them with oranges and apples, some wrapped candies, and a craft project or toy that would keep us entertained until Christmas.

Peppernut (Pfeffernuesse) Cookies or Spice (Speculatius) Cookies were popular St. Nicholas treats with German and Dutch children.  We tried to make them a few times, but this Ginger Cookie recipe is now my favorite spice cookie.

 Favorite Ginger Cookies

Preheat oven to 350 degrees
1/4 cup butter or margarine
1/2 cup Crisco shortening
1 cup sugar, plus 1/4 cup for rolling cookies before baking
1 egg
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon ground ginger
4 Tablespoons molasses
2 1/4 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
Blend butter, shortening and 1 cup sugar.  Add egg, molasses and spices. Finally, mix together the dry ingredients (flour & baking soda) and add them to the mixture.  Chill for about an hour.  Roll into 1-inch balls, or use a small 1-inch cookie scoop.  Roll in sugar and flatten with a fork or other cookie press.  Place on ungreased cookie sheet about 2 inches apart.  Bake in a 350 degree oven for 10 minutes.  Let cool a few minutes before moving cookies to a cooling rack.


You can find out more about St. Nicolas celebrations with this link.  This is a really interesting web site. If you find the section on the Real Face, there is a documentary at the very bottom of that page which chronicles the reconstruction of the face of St. Nicholas using modern forensic science and photographs of his skull.  Very fascinating! It is interesting to see how close the various paintings of St. Nicholas over the years are to the reconstruction.